A thing I like in dance music

By Dan Brooks in Music 4 Comments
Notable party monsters A$AP Rocky and Skrillex

Notable party monsters A$AP Rocky and Skrillex

You don’t live alone for eight years and not develop an interest in dance music. That would be weird. Just as my downstairs neighbor’s life as a law student leaves him free to watch his favorite movie, Trains & Explosions, from 4pm to 1am every day, my life as a hermit allows me to listen to the Soulwax Shibuya remix of “Daft Punk Is Playing at My House.” Also there is dancing. Such behavior is healthy and normal, provided that I listen to the good kind of dance music and not Ke$ha or Technotronic or whatever.

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Understand southern rap with this purple drank video

By Dan Brooks in Contemporary Media 7 Comments

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4b_Wzxo3wZY

Behold “Drank In My Cup,” which I first encountered in remix form on the excellent 2 Chainz & Future mixtape Codeine Astronauts. Be warned that Codeine Astronauts is perhaps the most ridiculous mixtape ever, albeit in delightful ways. One of the many entities involved in its release is Ticketmaster Tapes, so on the download version a white voice periodically says “Ticketmaster tapes! Real quality street music!” in the middle of the song. It kind of makes it all better. There is also a skit in which Big Moe discovers that some unscrupulous fellows have put Karo in the drank. Hilarity/violence ensues.

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Does culture need an industry?

By Dan Brooks in Public Discourse 5 Comments

Louis CK, who is selling his recent stand-up special for $5 on his website

Greetings from an unusually relaxed Monday around the Combat! blog offices, where we have been drinking coffee and arranging terrariums to catch some unusual Montana sunlight. Even my relaxation takes the form of compulsion, but at least everything is nourished. As any homosexual shut-in will tell you, plants make food from sun and water. I tend to think culture works the same way, in that out of the dirty, damp business of society grow a few arts, works and artists that are rad. Really, it doesn’t happen like that. Culture comes from a culture industry—or it has for the last sixty-some years.

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